raisin wine

My latest attempt is going to be raisin wine. I just bought four bags of mixed raisins. Did I just waste money on mixed raisins opposed to regular old raisins?
http://www.sun-maid.com/en/products/products_golden.html#jumbo_raisins Third one down.
Scott

may i point out that this could just be called "previously dehydrated" wine?

I don't know if you wasted your money or not. My guess is no. The more important question is: Did you grab a handful of the raisins and give it a good taste test? Did you like the taste? If you liked the taste, it was not a waste. I find that if it tasted good going in, it will likely taste good post-fermentation (likely being the key word) If you didn't taste the raisins... well ... you have better self control than I do.

I currently have a couple gallons of a test batch of something similar sitting in secondary. I loved the smell of it so much, I made a second batch. But I love raisins. (hence the self control issue)

And I do agree, it does sound like "dehydrated re-hydrated wine" - but that is like saying that if you were to soak raisins in water for a couple hours, they would taste like wine grapes. As this is clearly not true, I can only rationalize that raisin wine would taste like fermented raisins. Shocking, right? But my tests aren't far enough along for me to give anything other than an opinion. Still smells good, though.

Daedolon said:

But I love raisins.

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Try a raisin pie. My wife hates it; I love it.

I have a gallon of raisin wine aging right now. I tasted it after the first racking and it has potential, but without a year's worth of aging, I really don't know what the final product will be like. I used a red wine yeast (Red Star Pasteur Red, I think).

I thought i'd ask here rather then posting a new topic,
Did you boil the raisins first or just add them to water with sugar and yeast?

thanks

My friend Jim sent me a bottle of his raisin wine. (Recipe here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f79/raisin-wine-30147/ ).

It was wonderful! I highly recommend looking at his recipe and instructions to see how he did it, and I think it was pretty easy aside from grinding those sticky raisins!

I use golden raisins in my white wines for body, so I think a mixed raisin batch would be really good.

Personally, I dreaded the thought of chopping all those little raisins. I barely trust myself with carrots, never mind a raisin. So, I cheated.

I took a few handfuls of raisins and put them in my blender. Added about an equal amount of water, and ran them through. Chopped them quite nicely. They didn't turn in to pure "mush", but they were decidedly much smaller than when I started. I started adding more raisins, less water, etc experimenting until the texture was where I wanted. And I ran out of fresh water prior to getting them all chopped, so I used raisin water to puree raisins further. That was all in an effort to keep it right around a gallon total.

In retrospect, for my second gallon, I didn't worry about keeping it at a gallon. I put the whole gallon of water in there, and started it out in a big pot. Once the raisins started to settle, I racked the liquid in to a one gallon carboy - with no headspace like I had in the first batch.

Daedolon said:

I took a few handfuls of raisins and put them in my blender.

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+1. I saw this hint in a different thread and used it myself. I think I need to chop them up just a little less finely next time, though. I had a lot of sludge at the bottom of the fermenter.

And then the other hint that I completely spaced on - a grain bag. Or as I call it - a 5 gallon paint strainer from home depot! I had problems racking the wine off of the bottom, too. Next time, I won't have that problem because I'll just pull them out in the grain bag.

I actually put my "blended" raisins in bag, but a fair bit came through. Next time, I'll go for bigger chunks.

I am in the process of making my wine. I discovered something I thought I would share. When I was grinding them with my 3cup food processor, I added a grape or two to the raisins and it ground up much better than dry alone. Time to find a gallon recipe...

renshaw said:

I thought i'd ask here rather then posting a new topic,
Did you boil the raisins first or just add them to water with sugar and yeast?

thanks

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I crushed the raisens and added the potato peelings then some uncooked rice then hotish water then 5 kilogram bags of sugar then 4 small sachets of cookin yeast from aldi's how av i donne jx

John Dignam said:

I crushed the raisens and added the potato peelings then some uncooked rice then hotish water then 5 kilogram bags of sugar then 4 small sachets of cookin yeast from aldi's how av i donne jx

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Welcome to HBT.

If offered to me I’d probably try it but don’t think I’d ever put the effort into such a concoction. Regardless, if you like what it becomes, I’d say pretty well.

Before the good natured and often very funny razzing starts, just above a person who responds name is the date of the post. This one is over 12 years old. However, considering your unorthodox potato peal, raisin, rice, sugar and bread yeast drink, you may have just successfully revived this old girl.